Google screwed up my address by deciding that "E" should be spelled out "East". The county uses "E", the street sign says "E", Bing says "E" (not that they're any authority on the matter), but Google says "East" and now Walmart won't deliver things to my actual address.

I don't know a lot about systems/processes/protocol and the correct jargon, but my sense is that the problem isn't just technical. They could support ' just as well as E. But the scale of these automated systems chokes on these little quirks and they get amplified a huge amount and quickly become big problems.